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Comment by leadingthenet | Hacker News Reader

The cow wouldn't even exist if it weren't useful to us. Let's treat them as humanely as possible, while not pretending they're something they're not.

If you want to help animals, let's tackle the issue of rewilding and reforestation more seriously.

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This is a really strange argument. Even though you wouldn't exist if not for your parents, but you would still probably agree that they shouldn't have you for dinner?

When animal smugglers are caught at the border, the police has to handle the animals. They can't release them into the wild, they can't repossess and sell them because of the unknown health risks and costs, and they can't keep them at the border for all time. The most common result is thus to kill them.

Similar when there is an dangerous pandemic among animals, the most common response is to kill all the sick and those close by. Culling is the most common response to bird flue.

For obvious reason we do not treat humans in the same way, and it would be extremely inhumane to do so.

The argument is that it is also inhumane to kill these animals.

Yes, they kill them, but the meat is burned or otherwise destroyed, it is not going to be eaten.

What makes rewilding / reforestation a better focus for helping animals? I'd have thought the current situation dire enough that one would want to focus on the low-hanging fruit like regulations against the current cruelties and elimination of "Ag-Gag" laws.

I like meat, but this argument is wonky. Domesticated animals displace wild ones, because they take away the habitat.

> The cow wouldn't even exist if it weren't useful to us.

I hate this argument so much.

For a start, animals are perfectly capable of breeding on their own. They don't need you. You are not their god.

Who is pretending they are something they are not? They are sentient beings whether you like it or not. You might think you are superior, but your cat and your dog are certainly not.

And who says that being alive is good? They're born into captivity, without a chance and many of them tortured for their entire life. But that's OK, because at least they got to live?

The problem is that, as far as we can tell, they're not self-aware. They have no concept of "captivity". Their life is their life; they don't have hopes, dreams, or desires. They eat, shit, and fuck. That's all they do in the wild, that's all they do in captivity.

The beauty of being human is that we are not controlled by our instincts. We have meta-cognition, which therefore makes us distinct from all other animals. This is why the vast majority of the earth's population agrees that killing a human and killing an animal are very different things.

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